Home Remedies: DIY Cough Syrup recipe

Well, it's that time of year again. The students are back at school and the teachers are coming home with colds and giving them to their wives.

"But Mrs. Scrimp," you may say, "you told me that you take elderberry extract religiously and almost never get sick!"

Oh yes. You're right. I said that. It's even true. Except, I hadn't started taking it yet because I'm a dummy and don't always follow my own good advice. Do as I say, blog readers, not as I do, or you too may end up like me--sick and sad.

But, if you are sick, there are lots of things you can do to make yourself feel better! Consider buying some Yogi Cold Season tea, or Gypsy Cold Care from Traditional Medicinals. Or, you can make cough syrup at home.  And I can tell you how.

Elderberry Extract: How to Make it, and Why

Do you know what this is?

It's medicine. But not just any medicine. As you may have inferred from the reused bottles (salad dressing, curry paste, and jam, respectively), this medicine is 100% homemade. 

The three bottles above hold three different kinds of extract. Just like vanilla extract (which you can make by this same method, by the way), the method can be simplified down to "add some plant matter to some vodka and wait."  Today, what I'm going to talk about is the tall bottle of elderberry extract--how to make elderberry extract, and why you should.

Home Remedies: For Mosquito Bites

Mr. Scrimp and I spent quite a bit of time outside over the last few days. He was clever and used bug spray. I was not.

We both ended up with a truly ridiculous number of bites--although I admit, Mr. Scrimp got far fewer than I did. I started counting them and got bored after bite number 33 just on my legs.

Fortunately, my front yard is a source of an excellent bug bite cure, one which I learned about years ago: plantain.

That's right. I'm talking about the ubiquitous, find-it-everywhere annoyance that is the second most-common turf weed after dandelion. If you are responsible for yard care, I imagine that this little plant makes you tear your hair out.

But don't mow it down! If you have a yard full of plantain that hasn't been contaminated by commercial fertilizers or pesticides, there are a lot of useful things it can do.

Spearmint!

I spent some time with Mr. Scrimp's mom yesterday. We hung out, made ice cream, and canned blueberry jam--and she gave me a huge bag full of fresh spearmint!

This stuff grows like a weed, but it is a super useful plant, and I'm really excited to have so much of it. I will be hanging this batch in my pantry to dry for easy storage and use throughout the upcoming year. For instance, did you know that spearmint tea can treat nausea?

This fall, one of our goals is to reduce our use of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and one of the ways we're preparing to do that is by making our own remedies at home.

Do you use any home remedies or herbs on a regular basis?

Container Gardening Experiment: The Saga Begins

According to the chart that Burpee published and Home Depot hung in their garden center, today, May 25, is THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR to start planting seeds in Northern Ohio. So, I have duly planted a host of seedlings and am settling into the waiting game to see if any of them actually work their magic and, you know... grow.

I know some of my readers are fortunate enough to live in areas with a fair amount of available land to them. Mr. Scrimp and I, however, have a postage-stamp front lawn, a front step with a foot or two of space on it, and no back yard at all. So, traditional gardening just isn't really an option for us. We have a couple strips of rocky, weedy ground off to one side of our driveway, that gets just about the right mix of sun and shade to be perfect for growing plants in. That's it.

So? Container garden!

Another Delay

It's sleeting outside and the Scrimpalicious household is under siege from some sort of flu-like ailment... again. Instead of crafting, I've put on my favorite flannel pajamas and settled into bed with Mr. Scrimp, some seedless green grapes, a dose of elderberry extract and ginger ale every four hours, and Season 3 of Survivorman. I sense hot chocolate in my immediate future.

The downside is, I feel pretty miserable and I might have to miss work tomorrow. The upside is, if I have to miss work tomorrow I'll have a whole day to putter around my house, take photos, and do crafty things.

What are your favorite things to do when you're sick?

Flu Season

The holidays are almost upon us, and with them come aches, pains, headaches, and upset stomachs. And, in addition to that, you might get the flu.

Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays, but in the Scrimpalicious household this year, they are kicking off with something that I'm watching anxiously in case it becomes the flu. My husband is pathetically sick in bed with a fever and all the above mentioned aches and pains, although so far he's only got a mild cough and moderate congestion.

But it struck me that now would be an apropos moment for mentioning my favorite health discovery of this year: Elderberry extract!

For those of you who don't know, there was a study done in the 90's that showed that elderberry flavonoids compare favorably (yes, that means they're better) to Tamiflu in the treatment of Influenza. Now, I would never say not to take Tamiflu if you're diagnosed with the flu, especially H1N1, but you can take them together with no ill effect, and there's evidence that regular doses of elderberry every four hours will actually shorten the duration of your illness more than Tamiflu will.

Because my beloved is sick, I stopped by Whole Foods to inspect their selection and I was fairly shocked, to be honest, even though I'm aware that there are certain areas in which Whole Foods is prone to price gouging. (I checked CVS too, but they had nothing.)

The actual extract, as in a liquid with a dropper, came in at about a dollar a dose, and there were only 11 doses in the bottle. I kid you not. Being that we are into the saving of money, I kept combing the shelves until I found (and this is worth digging for) a bottle of elderberry extract supplements. These were $8-ish for a bottle of 100, and it's a standardized dosage of elderberry, which I feel like is preferable anyway because it means no messing around with droppers.

Recommendation is that once you start to show symptoms of being ill, take a dose every four hours. If you're not ill but have been exposed, take it three times a day. I have family members who have done this with good results.

What you're looking for is black elderberry extract, or sambucol.  It may be labeled differently depending on where you buy it.

And here, because you should never take the Internet's word for things, and I want to give you some more statistically significant evidence than "it worked for my family", is a link to the PubMed abstract of the study I mentioned.